ABC's Election Analyst blogs on the wonderful world of Australian Elections.

March 31, 2011

The Tight Finish in Balmain

The final undecided contest at the 2011 NSW Election is coming down to a nail-biting conculsion.

The electorate of Balmain remains too close to call.

Currently the Liberal candidate James Falk has a first preference lead of 1,029 votes over Labor's Verity Firth, a percentage point gap of 2.38.

However, more important is the gap between Firth and the third finishing candidate, Green Jamie Parker. Firth's lead with 85.2% of the vote counted is only 40 votes.

5PM Update: The Greens now lead Labor by 203 votes on first preferences, but the distribution of preferences is still to come.

The reason this gap matters more is because whoever finishes third out of Firth and Parker will have their preferences distributed, almost certainly allowing whoever finishes second to leap-frog Falk and win the seat.

Before it can be established who has finished second, the 2,824 votes with five lower finishing candidates will have to be distributed. The contest for second is so close that the Electoral Commission has been unable to conduct its usual indicative preference counts, because until it can be established who has finished third, it is impossible to determine the winning candidate.

Current totals at at 5pm on Thursday 31 March are:

Balmain Progressive Count - 89.4% Counted

Candidate

Party

Votes

Pct

James FALK

Liberal

14,738

32.57

Jamie PARKER

Green

13,876

30.66

Verity FIRTH

Labor

13,673

30.21

Maire SHEEHAN

Independent

1,366

3.02

Jane WARD

Independent

674

1.49

Leeanne GESLING

Christian Democrat

422

0.93

Nicholas FOLKES

Independent

285

0.63

Jon SHAPIRO

Independent

220

0.49

Previous update 11:45am on Thursday 31 March are:

Balmain Progressive Count - 85.2% Counted

Candidate

Party

Votes

Pct

James FALK

Liberal

14,140

32.77

Verity FIRTH

Labor

13,111

30.39

Jamie PARKER

Green

13,071

30.29

Maire SHEEHAN

Independent

1,317

3.05

Jane WARD

Independent

636

1.47

Leeanne GESLING

Christian Democrat

401

0.93

Nicholas FOLKES

Independent

268

0.62

Jon SHAPIRO

Independent

202

0.47

For Parker to win, he needs to overturn Firth's 40 vote lead, either on first preferences that remain to be counted, or by receiving a net benefit on preferences from the five excluded candidates.

Without actually seeing the ballot papers, I cannot offer a firm opinion on whether Firth or Parker will finish second. I'm also not sure what votes remain to be counted.

However, I would think the preferences of the five candidates to be distributed would not be of net benefit to the Greens. Both Folkes and Gesling would be likely to favour the Liberal candidate, and then Firth over Parker. I would also think Sheehan's preferences would favour Firth slightly over Parker.

If Parker passes Firth, he will have an easier task of passing the Liberal candidate to win, as Labor recommended preferences to the Greens. (Update: This may not now be the case. It has been pointed out to me that Labor's election day how-to-vote did not direct preferences to the Greens, though material distributed before election day did.)

However, the Greens recommended a '1' only vote, which means that if Green votes are distributed, the rate of exhausted preferences is likely to be much higher.

However, Firth would only need a net benefit of 10% over the Liberal to win on preferences. If 70% of Green preferences exhausted, Firth would only need 20% of preferences compared to 10% for Falk to overhaul the Liberal and win.

To add a note of history to the contest, if either Firth or Parker finish third on first preferences, and then move into second place on the exclusion of the other five candidates, and then pass the Liberal on preferences, it would create a first for NSW.

While we have occassionally seen a candidate win from third place at Federal elections, such as Andrew Wilkie in Denison last August and the defeat of Pauline Hanson in Blair in 1998, it has never happened under optional preferential voting.

If the third place candidate wins in Balmain, it will create a piece of political history.

UPDATE: After a couple of ill-informed remarks from the UK, I should point out that the reason the counting is not complete is not because of the Alternative Vote, but because Australia has very liberal rules on postal and absent votes. The close for receipt of postal votes was Wednesday evening, and the Absent votes were also returned from other division on Wednesday. It is those votes that have been counted today. And as it is a very close contest in Balmain, every one of those declaration vote envelopes, and every ballot paper, has been very tightly scrutineered.

Now that the first preference count has been completed, the distribution of preferences can take place tomorrow morning, and I'm going along with a camera to prove the count is conducted by hand.

All Australian ballot papers are counted at least twice, once on election night in polling places, and then check counted the next day once the ballot papers have been transported to the office of the Returning Officer. Results are also reported by polling place, so there is a lot more close checking of the totals than occurs in the UK. Various verification procedures are then undertaken awaiting the receipt of postal and absent votes. The same system is used in Canada, which uses first past the post voting, so it is not AV that causes the delay.

Distance makes it a bit hard to do the count centrally as in the UK. It could all be done on the night in booths and check counted the next day and then wrapped up. However, that would mean a lot less people having their vote counted. Around one in five Australian votes is cast pre-poll, postal or absent, and it is these votes that delay the finalisation of the count.

The 89.4% counted figure is close to the final figure, effectivley the turnout figure.

I should also point out the new government was sworn in on Monday this week. It is normal practice in Australia for the change of government to take place before the formal declaration of results. The result is usually clear without the need to wait for counting to be finished.

Comments

Labor handed out a "How to vote" at prepoll that preferenced Sheehan 2 and Parker 3

On polling day they handed out another version that preferenced only Sheehan 2 and did not preference Parker. Therefore the so called preference to the Greens only influenced 2000 prepoll votes.

COMMENT: I can't verify what you say. Hopefully the new government will remove the dreadful law that Labor introduced that banned nearly everyone, and certainly banned the media, from accessing registered how-to-vote material.

Based on your discussion it appears that you've almost written-off the Liberal candidate James Falk. Is this the case?

Also why, in your professional opinion and years of experience, is the count in Balmain taking so long? Wouldn't you suspect and hope that the electoral commission is working around the clock to produce an end result for Balmain? Would scrutineers be somewhat overzealous in Balmain? And when can we expect some definitive result out of Balmain?

COMMENT: They have to wait for the close of postal votes and the arrival of absent votes. It is normal for the count to be slower in close contests, and one of the advantages of a slow and heavily scrutineered count is that it decreases the chances of a re-count.

Hey Antony,
the ABC calculator has called Balmain for the Greens. Is it still possible that Verity Firth can overtake James Parker on preferences from the lower 5 candidates or have their preferences already been distributed?

Thankyou for your coverage of the NSW election - so much better than the commercial media.

On election night I think I heard a couple of commentators say that the Green vote is often understated in polls and in early counting. Do you know of any reason why this would be the case?

COMMENT: The overstating of the Green vote in pollls has become a feature of recent elections. Whether it is caused by people changing their mind late in the campaign, or is something to do with the undecided and under sampled being unlikely to be Green voters is hard to determine.

Antony, I notice Jamie Parker has attracted what seems to be a disproportionately large absent vote. So much so the difference between his absent vote and Veriry Firth's is almost the same as the overall gap between them. What mechanism exist to check if people have voted more than once in different locations and how long would this check usually take. I am merely observing what could be suspicious voting paterns.

COMMENT: The rolls will be scanned and details of absent votes checked against who voted. If there is any evidence of multiple voting, it will have done the Greens no good as it would give their opponents grounds for a successful appeal to the Court of Disputed Returns. Every time a close contest has gone to the courts, the alleged cases of multiple voting evaporate as adminstrative errors. The Greens always do better with Absent voting.

COMMENT: That comes down to how much fraudulent enrolment exists. If you listen to the Electoral Commission and the National Audit Office, this is not a problem. If you listen to the H.S.Chapman Society, false enrolment is rampant and every Labor victory in the last three decades has been caused by roll stacking.

If you want to prove that people multiple voted using false enrolments, you first have to find the false enrolments. I'm sure if the result is close, the defeated candidate will devote resources to trying to prove the case you are making with the intent of taking it to the courts. I'd be surprised if it got anywhere.

COMMENT: Receipt of postal voting closed the Thursday after the election. The final bundles of absent votes were returned to the various Returning Officer by the Friday after the election, after which they finalised the first preference count. I understand the distribution of preferences was done on the Saturday morning. It was the time required for return of postal and absent votes that delayed the count.